Since the QANTAS lockout was stopped by the Australian government, good faith bargaining has been engaged between QANTAS and its various unions with its negotiations with the pilots being seen as the “test case” for what these negotiations would mean.

Sadly, there is little “good faith” going on in the negotiations and it has become apparent to most that there will be a forced arbitratted settlement between QANTAS and most of its unions. 

When QANTAS engaged in its lockout to force the Australian government hands into this mess, I speculated that this could be very risky for QANTAS if an arbitrated settlement had to be forced in this.  Politicians and particularly the current government of Australia ultimately have to pay close attention to its consitituents aka labor unions.  The most expedient solution is to force a solution that makes the unions happier than QANTAS.  QANTAS, on the other hand, needs cost savings and a union favorable agreement won’t give them that.

At the end of the day, you want a government involved in this kind of thing only when there is an absolute critical emergency.  The disagreements between QANTAS and its unions, in particular the pilots, really had not reached that state.  Government is likely to be very annoyed at being tagged with this mess in this way and that doesn’t bode well for QANTAS either.

It is always possible that I’ll be surprised at the results.  I rate that possibility as less than 1 in 3 chances.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax